Various business critical applications may be run on virtual machines and thus it may be critical to create backups of such virtual machines in case a failure or loss of data occurs. Backing up a virtual machine may consume resources on the virtual machine, may cause the virtual machine to run slower, and may affect services supported by the virtual machine. For example, during some backup processes, write requests to the virtual machine being backed up may need to be written to a separate file and may use up valuable resources on the virtual machine. Accordingly, reducing the use of resources in a virtual machine during backup processes may be a primary goal in various business contexts.